Reaching for the Stars (REWRITE)
by MoonDrop162
Summary: My name is Piper Rose Kirk and I'm going to tell you a story. Fem!Kirk. K/S slow burn. Rating subject to change later on.
1. Prologue

My name is Piper Rose Kirk and I'm going to tell you a story.

Now, talking about myself hasn't ever come naturally to me. It involves putting words to what I think and feel and I've spent a good portion of my life doing exactly the opposite, much to the dismay of my friends and family. So… forgive me if sometimes I find it hard to… to keep the words flowing, but I'll do my best to be vulnerable for you, if you'll do your best not to judge me until the end.

Can you do that for me?

Awesome. See? We're already off to a great start. Now… where to begin?

I suppose anywhere would do; my life's been such a thrill ride from the get-go, that it'd be an exciting story no matter where we dropped in. That's not the way this is done, though, right? People usually start at the beginning. It's hard to say where my beginning really is. I was born, and arguably that's when my life started, with all the pain and blood my birth entailed. However, I'd feel disingenuous if I told you that who I am today started when I was squeezed out of my mother's vagina.

 _Captain, if you would be so kind as to refrain from discussing your mother's genitalia, I believe your audience would be much more receptive to the idea of listening._

Oh hush you great, green hard drive. You're interrupting, which, one: **rude** , and two: not your story.

 _I do not entirely agree with that sentiment, Captain._

Well poop for you. And seriously, Spock? Again with the "Captain"?

 _Apologies._ _However, I still -_

Is your name Piper?

 _No, Captain._

Then you are not the most qualified individual to tell this story.

… _you are a singularly frustrating individual._

MOVING ON.

My birth, and how my father died (great man that he was) and the surrounding circumstances might be the chronological beginning to my person, but it feels like cheating to say that's what _defined_ me as a person, where who I am today really started. The struggle is there are so many character-defining moments in my life that it's a little overwhelming to choose one and have the absolute confidence to say **Yes, yes this is me. This is where I began.**

Maybe I'll never really know. So I'll let you decide. I'll just… just tell the whole story, in all of its wonderful, traumatising, fantastic glory and you can make up your own mind.

So to do this right, I'll just say that my life started with a lightning storm in space.

* * *

Hey, all! So, as promised in my original version, here is the beginning of a rewrite of my story Reaching for the Stars. I have this one planned out to be much longer than the original, with more substance and detail than the first one. I'm really excited about this. I hope you guys (old readers and new) are excited, too!

Please let me know what you think!

MoonDrop


	2. Chapter 1

I never had the privilege of knowing my father. Of course, if he'd lived then my mom and I would have died so I still wouldn't have met him. Wait, now that I think about it, if my father hadn't been the hero he still would have been killed trying to get away to come see us sooo…

…Okay, lemme try this again.

I was alive for all of one minute and twenty-nine seconds before my father died saving my life, my mom's life, and the lives of the 799 other crew members.

While I will always love that man for what he did - not just for his crew, but for the future of his family - his loss is something that I have always felt, acutely and painfully. I spent months of my childhood wasting away the night wondering what my father would think of how I was turning out.

Despite my mom's pain, his pictures have been displayed proudly and openly in my home; though I've been denied the chance to experience his presence in my life, I have his face memorized.

I have his eyes.

It's the first thing that anyone acquainted with my father back Before says about me. His blue eyes and his smile. I treasure them both. They are my own connection to my father and no one will ever be able to taint that for me.

My mom, Winona, has always been a sad and lonely woman. I've been told she wasn't like that before my father had to go and be the hero. That's not to say that Mom was neglectful or resentful toward me for looking like the love of her life, but her smile was always a little lacking.

It was in her eyes. They never smiled with her. Her pale eyes had this kind of dullness to them, as if a light in her soul had been snuffed out, and she wasn't sure how to get it going again. Still, she tried as best she could and I see that now.

Though, to be fair, it took me years and lots of therapy to get there. (More on that later.)

Wait, I'm not saying that she and I had a strained relationship or something. I loved her in the way that only children can: with total understanding and easy affection. And she loved me with all of the love she had left to give. It often felt like my Mom was the only person who ever understood me as a child, which, let me tell you, was no easy feat. People say I'm a genius, I say they're all morons. Semantics, really. Even my older brother Sam (who's first name was George like my father, but we didn't use for obvious reasons) had problems with me sometimes.

Could you blame him, though? He's six and a half years older than me, and there I was, helping him through his Klingon language courses without batting an eyelash. I guess he felt humiliated by me sometimes. It couldn't have been easy to have a little sister that could keep up with him in school. He made a point to never bring his friends around me, and we never ran in the same circles. Despite how my existence seemed to make Sam feel inadequate, I knew that he still loved me. Well… for a while I knew it.

That's jumping ahead, though.

I could read before I could walk, much to the amusement of my mom. I never got tired of her reading to me. The old stuff, where you can hold a book in your hands. Not off a PADD. There's something to be said about the crinkle of a page as it turns, or the way a good story can just suck you in, effortlessly. I lean more towards non-fiction, but that's not to say I don't enjoy reading some Tolkien now and again.

My father had left behind a lot of books. They covered every topic imaginable, though there was an obvious bias toward the Sciences given his career in Starfleet. The moment I was old enough I sucked them dry without exception, much to my mom's frustration.

I can't count how many times she kicked me out of the house, forbidding me from coming home for at least an hour so that "you don't forget what the sun looks like dammit!" Joke was on her though, because I always kept books stashed by my reading tree and just continued to absorb the written word outside.

As you can imagine that was not conducive to making friends. Or staying in my age group when I finally started school. Which made making friends worse.

I won't lie, I was a lonely kid. I hate the term genius. I don't feel like I deserve it. I mean, pit me against the dumbest Vulcan and I might have a chance, but other than that, I'm pretty sure people are exaggerating. I just know how to make my brain work for me in the most efficient way possible. I hoard information like hoarders… hoard… things.

...Okay, that one kind of got away from me. But you see my point, right? It isn't an increased intellect, I don't think. I just… use my brain to the best of my ability. I see the patterns, I make the leaps, and hope I make it okay on the other side. If that's what people see a genius as, then, well, I guess I fit? I've never felt like much of a genius, at least. Geniuses don't… fail the way that I've failed the people around me.

Maybe I simply don't like all the attention that being called a "prodigy" brings. I have enough reasons for people to stick a camera in my face and bombard me with questions already.

I'm going off on a tangent again. Back to the lonely childhood.

When I turned five my mom enrolled me in school. She tried to at least get me placed in second grade but the administration was having exactly none of that, so I started Kindergarten. I'll skip over that clusterfucking _nightmare_ by saying that I cried all the time out of sheer boredom, nap time was the stupidest thing since ever, and Mountain Meadow Crayola was the best color for grass, thank you very much. Fortunately, the horror didn't last long because the teachers finally started noticing that _something_ was different about me. It was about three months into school that everyone got together and had the _brilliant idea_ of placing me in a higher grade.

It's almost like my mom was right the whole time. Hilarious.

Still, starting third grade (because that's as high as regulations allowed me to skip) at the tender age of five made it even more difficult for me to go through the terrifying process of making friends. It didn't help that I was three months late to the game.

I hated it.

The teacher wasn't quite sure what to do with me. Ms. Rizzio tried to include me in the lessons by calling on me for answers and generally just doing the best she could, but she wasn't prepared for someone like me. No one in my class was. Fuck, _I_ didn't know what to do with myself half the time. It's a universal truth that children, no matter the species, can be ignorant little shits just as often as they can be full of unconditional love.

I'll let you guess which side I regularly saw.

While I dealt with the challenge of navigating through the social construct of being accepted among my peers, my saving grace came from the course work. Not in the sense that it challenged me because ha, that stuff was a _joke_ compared to what I'd been studying in my father's books. More that it was a comfort to flex my proverbial muscles. Still, I can't say I truly felt comfortable.

I spent a lot of lunch periods alone with my nose stuck in a book. Everyone in my school tended to treat me like I was invisible which was better than open hostility and aggression. In some ways though it was much, much worse.

I've always tried to make the best out of what life throws at me. It wasn't so much optimism as spite. That might seem petty, but then you probably don't realize just _how_ much grade A bullshit life throws my way. That exclusion by my peers and teachers taught me the true meaning of loneliness, and how deeply those roots will grow if left unchecked.

I think it's a battle I'll always be fighting. There will always be some sort of darkness in me from being so isolated for so long. The important thing to take away from it all was that if anyone knew what friendship and loyalty really mean to a human being, it was me. If I could figure out how to at least freaking _meet_ someone, by God, I'd be the best goddamn friend they'd ever had. I refuse to let anyone suffer like I've had to suffer.

I would die before I'd let that happen.

I _have_ died before I let that happen.

But that's _way_ ahead of the game. (Man, I'm really out of practice with this whole story thing.)

Back on track.

My first few years of school were awful. I hated how boring the material was (except for cursive, that shit's awesome, and I will bring it back if it's the last thing I do). I hated not being seen and I hated how much I _wanted_ to be seen.

Despite the challenges, I think I managed pretty well. My mom helped. Like I said, she got me. I don't know how. I was an unusual child, to say the least, but Mom, _bless her_ , just rolled with all my idiosyncrasies.

Sam helped too in his own way. He taught me how to climb trees and about the car in the shed that was cherry red and all muscle. My father had built it from the ground up before his last and fatal excursion in space. (He'd named her Priscilla. She was _gorgeous_.) Sam taught me how to pitch a baseball and also how to hit it, and that the dirtier my fingernails were, the more I was doing right.

Those memories, at least, I can think about and smile without having to wade through the anger and the hurt first.

Life passed in this kind of rhythm until I turned seven. It was during summer break. The sun was hatefully bright and the air was horribly muggy when my mom gathered my brother and I up for a stroll around Riverside's puny little mall. Our air conditioner had decided that life just wasn't worth living anymore and the farmhouse was absolutely unbearable. My curly blonde hair was sticking to my forehead and the back of my neck in the most unpleasant way, and Sam didn't look much better. The _mall,_ on the other hand… I think there would have been riots that summer if the mall's central air hadn't been up to snuff.

I can't tell you what store we were going into when we met Frank Porter. I remember that we were standing outside of it, waiting until I'd finished my raspberry ice-cream. All I cared about was my delicious cone. I was walking behind my mom, totally engrossed in catching a drip before it hit my fingers when Bam. I walked right into his legs and lost my everything in the process.

Frank was… well.

Frank was hard to gauge

Not that I was especially good at reading people that young. I'd never had the need to be. Hindsight is always a bitch and I can't help but to tell myself that I should have seen some sort of sign, warned my mom in some way of the epic fuckup that was about to happen.

It wouldn't have mattered though because he made my mom laugh. It was the first time in a long time that anyone had _really_ made her laugh. I don't think any of us stood a chance.

They were married in just over a year. The sadness was still there, my mom was never been able to get out from under that weight, but the hold it had over her wasn't nearly as deep, not as consuming. I couldn't fault her for seeking comfort in Frank's company. I still don't. If anyone deserved happiness it was my mom. I just wish it hadn't been Frank that showed her happiness was still within her reach.

Maybe if circumstances had been different, Frank could have made us happy too. We'll never know, though, because right after they married, my mom changed her inactive status with Starfleet. She'd told us that she'd taken too long away from the fleet, that this was her life's work, and she still wanted to explore and understand. Being a science officer (isn't it cute? That's how my parents met), the wonders of the universe never lost their allure for my mom, despite what being in outer space had cost her. She promised she'd keep in contact and that she'd never be away for too long. That she'd always come back. She promised it with a fervor that I'd never seen from her before. She would _come back_.

Mom leaving never ended up being the problem in the end. No, the **real** problem was what would happen once she was gone.

It started slow, like molasses. An out of place comment here, a not-so-gentle nudge there. Sam and I grew increasingly uncomfortable in our own home. I started creeping into my brother's room and sleeping in a ball at the foot of his bed, if only so that I was around _real_ family (because whatever Frank was trying to be, family sure as shit was not the end goal). Eventually Sam got so tired of me waking him up when I accidentally crushed his toes, that one night he cracked an eye to glare at me and sighed, scooting over so I had my own space under the covers. I stopped sleeping at the end of the bed after that.

When we tried to tell Mom about it, the disappointment in her face felt like a sucker punch to the gut. She wasn't even scolding me for anything, yet I still came out feeling like scum. She had just hoped so hard that we could try and accept Frank as a part of this family, that we could make it work.

We stopped bringing it up.

I can still remember The Point when my childhood well and truly ended. I had just turned eight, and I was set to start school that fall. Sam, sixteen years old and deep into his 'obligatory teenage rebellion phase', was home less and less. When he did come home, it was usually to get a spare change of clothes and check up on me. He'd make sure I was eating, that I did my homework (pfft), and that I was sleeping alright. Then he'd breeze out the door before Frank would even realized he'd been there (not that he'd notice as he was pretty much living inside of a bottle of whatever booze was cheapest at the time).

It was after one such visit from my older brother that The Point began.

I was cleaning the dishes after my dinner and I was angry. I missed my brother. I knew Frank was hard to deal with, but why did Sam have to leave me here all alone, cleaning up the vomit and constantly degraded? It wasn't fair. I just wanted Sam to come home. I wanted _Mom_ to come home. Things were always better when she was planetside. Frank sobered up and put on the good face for his wife and the house was bearable for a while. I wanted so much and was too little to do anything about any of it. My hands shook, I was so furious with the injustice of it all.

In my anger and the shaking of my hands, a cup slipped from my grasp, shattering against the linoleum into a thousand crystalline pieces. I know, just my luck right? I let loose a string of (rather impressive) Klingon curses and dried my hands off to begin cleaning up the mess.

I had an epiphany watching those glass pieces scatter. If I couldn't handle cleaning one cup without it falling apart, how was I to handle what my life was turning into? I couldn't. That was the whole root of my bitterness. I was too young to initiate any real change in my life, or walk down avenues toward lasting solutions. I felt so useless in that moment, and so disappointed in myself that I couldn't even clean this damn cup without a catastrophe. It made me furious. I felt personally offended by my own blunder.

It was a relief to have something to be angry about that I could put my hands on. Unfortunately, the relief was short lived. I grabbed a large shard too quickly and sliced my hand open. It was amidst my second string of curses that Frank stumbled through the kitchen doorway that led to our living room.

Frank is a rather tall man. I haven't seen him in years, but if I had to guess, I'd say he stood proud a few inches over six feet tall. He had a pair of deep hazel eyes, with the green and brown fighting for dominance, depending on what light he was in. His hair was a warm chocolate color, and there seemed to be a constant dusting of scruffy facial hair, no matter when he'd shaved. A long, straight nose, and rather full lips, and Frank was really quite a handsome man, objectively speaking.

At that moment, though, it was hard to see past the bloodshot eyes and the sweat stains under his arms.

"Wha's goin' on in h're?" he slurred at me, swaying so badly I was impressed he could even walk. I did my best not to roll my eyes at him, but who knows how successful I was. Judging by the glare he directed at me, I probably failed pretty hard.

"Nothing, Frank, just a broken cup," I muttered, squinting at the cut that went right across my palm.

"'Re you… 're you talkin' back at me, girlie?"

I looked up at him flatly.

"No? You asked what happened and I answered. I mean, I guess in the technical sense I was talking back, but not under the connotations that you're implying. More in a literal sense that I was responding to the only other person here to answer their question…" Frank, unlike my family, had zero appreciation for my mind, as evidenced by the thunderous look that still gives me sweaty palms if I think about it.

I can't remember what was said next or how action A led to action B but the next time I was completely aware of what was happening, Frank was beating me. Not the "you bad girl, now I have to spank you to teach you the error of your ways" kind of discipline, either. This was more biblical. It involved fists, and belts, and the occasional boot to my ribs.

I wish I could tell you that I was strong and didn't give him the satisfaction of crying out or begging him to stop. I wasn't. The worst injury I'd ever sustained up until that point had been a sprained ankle or the occasional (read: frequent) allergic reaction to food or medications. As such, my experience and tolerance for pain was rather low. From the moment Frank laid his hands on me I sobbed like the eight year-old child I was.

As far as my experience with Frank went, The Beating wasn't the worst in terms of physical injuries. I'd feel pretty safe saying it was the most traumatising, though. It… I don't know how to explain everything I was feeling, during and after. I'm not sure that I ever will.

Anger, certainly, though the force of it was so intense that I'm inclined to call it rage, black and toxic as that word suggests. I hated Frank beforehand but it was nothing to the depth it held after he started beating me. It was like a force of nature. I had no control over that ugly and hungry beast, even if I'd cared to try. There are very few people in my life that I've ever truly hated, but Frank was the very first. If he'd died right then and there, I would have spit on his corpse without even a shred of remorse.

The other emotions, though, those are harder to pin down. They all bled into each other and flashed through my body so quick that I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to feel. Sadness, betrayal, confusion, hurt, terror, and maybe even some vindication that I was right about him. I felt all of those, but somehow not really any of them.

Like I said, I'm not the best when it comes to the hard stuff.

I can't say how long Frank's beating lasted, but by the end of it I wasn't feeling much of anything besides a grim acceptance, and an all-consuming numbness. It ended when Frank felt I'd sufficiently "learned my lesson" and he stumbled back into the living room to pass out on the floor.

I didn't get up immediately. I stayed on the kitchen floor for a long time, sniffling and staring at checkerboard linoleum, thinking how it needed to be mopped before the weekend was over. My mind went back and forth between how this couldn't be _real,_ this couldn't be what my life _was_ , and an understanding of why I never saw my brother anymore.

Eventually the throbbing pain of my ribs and literally every muscle _ever_ demanded I get off the floor and see if anything was broken. It took a couple tries, and judicious use of the counters for stability, but I managed to finally stand. I slowly made my way out of the kitchen toward the safety of my bedroom. I grabbed a fluffy towel from the linen closet along the way, determined to wash what I was sure was blood off of my face.

I didn't bother waiting for the water to warm up before I collapsed in the shower, clothes and all. I curled into a ball on the floor, hiding my face in my knees, and I sobbed. Why was this happening to me? Why had I drawn the short straw in life? What had I done to deserve the shit life hurled at me constantly? Why did my mom have to leave me here with this monster? Why didn't Sam take me with him when he _knew_? Why, why, why, _why?_

I can barely remember peeling off my clothes and washing myself before crawling into bed that night. Everything was out of focus, stuck behind this haze of apathy and misery. When my alarm for school went off the next morning, I decided then and there that the universe hated me and everything I stood for.

Getting ready for school was an ordeal but I couldn't bring myself to care if I was late or not. I was pretty sure that at least one of my ribs had a hairline fracture from a nasty kick last night. Every time I moved my left I arm it felt like I was setting my chest on fire. I didn't even want to look at my face and, not for the last time, found myself grateful that Mom didn't make me cut my long curls that often. I had my own blonde curtain to ward off the rest of the world. I was planning on telling someone at my school the first chance I got. Like hell I was staying in the house with this monster for one second longer. Still, that didn't mean I wanted the first person I came across asking me questions.

Anyway, I got to school before ten which I counted as a small miracle. It was when I was in the office signing in as tardy that I learned there was no end to the amount of cruelty the universe had in store for me.

"Piper, is that you?" the principal called from his office doorway, making me peek up at him shyly.

I'd spoken to the man all of one time when my Kindergarten teacher dumped me in front of his desk and demanded I be tested. He was a middle-aged man with a kind face and constant bags under his eyes. I didn't have much of an opinion about him, but I knew his name was Robert Patterson and that he really did care about the quality of education for his students. That, and he had given me cookies when I was five.

"Ah, I've… I've been waiting for you to show up. You weren't in class earlier when I sent for you, is everything alright?"

I considered the man and the rest of the people - children and adult alike - in the room before I silently shook my head. His expression, already apprehensive and full of dread, fell. He wiped a hand over his face and gave a bone-deep sigh before he stepped to the side and wordlessly ushered me into his office.

Now, I didn't really think the man was going to do anything like Frank because: A) he wasn't insane, B) there were witnesses, and C) he'd never given me any feelings in the past that made me suspicious of him. Even so, I hesitated a second, my hand clenching tightly on the pen before I forcibly relaxed and set it down. I kept my head down as I walked into the small room. I didn't want to have the discussion about my black eye and split lip before we had absolute privacy.

The door clacked into the latch softly and Principal Patterson gestured to one of the two seats in front of his desk as he sat down. Obediently I sat, staring at the loose fibers of my jeans. I heard another sigh before he spoke again.

"Piper, I… I don't really know how to tell you this," he hedged.

There was a flicker of suspicion that was finally setting off alarm bells in my head. He hadn't mentioned the bruise on my face, he didn't know what happened last night. Why had he wanted to talk?

"There's, well… there's been an accident, Piper."

I stiffened. Who was it? Was it Sam? Had he finally left me for good, body rotting in a ditch somewhere? Was it mom? She'd promised, though. She always said she'd come back to me. Who? What? _What happened?_

"Who?" I asked. It was the first time I'd spoken since last night and my voice was hoarse and rough with all the crying and abuse I'd put it through last night. It barely even sounded like me.

"…Your mother," he responded softly.

If I'd thought I'd cried all I could last night, I was wrong. My hands covered my face and tears spilled between my fingers and stained my clothes. I wept the way one does when there is nothing left but the grief.

I didn't exist outside of my anguish in that moment. It sucked everything away from me that I wanted to think and feel, in their place a deep, empty void where life had no meaning and I couldn't see any point.

To his credit, Principal Patterson came around the desk to kneel in front of me, drawing me into a gentle hug. I sobbed into his shoulder, probably ruining his sweater for the rest of time, until every emotion in me was spent and there was nothing left for me to feel.

"When? H-how?" I mumbled, not quite sure if he'd heard me over my sniffling.

"Piper, I'm not entirely sure that's - "

" _When. How._ "

Principal Patterson drew back to look me in the eye, and I could see the sheen to his eyes that said he'd shed his own tears, when suddenly he froze.

Then I froze, because I remembered.

I could feel my face flush a deep crimson as his hands frantically pushed my blonde curtain aside, the angry purple around my eyes standing out sharply against my pale skin. He spluttered for a few seconds before his face darkened. His anger was palpable enough that I shrank away from him.

"Piper, what happened to your face?"

I couldn't meet his eyes. The best I could do was stare at his ear. I'd completely forgotten about my face. How stupid. So _stupid_.

"...Frank," I finally whispered. "He was drunk last night and I broke a glass cleaning up the dishes. I think he was just looking for an excuse. He's an asshole."

Principal Patterson's hands tightened around my shoulders momentarily before he stood up and walked back behind his desk. He sat down heavily and stayed there for a moment, eyes unfocused. I watched him, wary, tired, and a little bit relieved.

Whatever happened now, surely Frank wouldn't be a part of my life anymore. Maybe then Sam would come home and we could mourn in peace. It was out of my hands now.

"I'm so sorry, Piper. You of all people don't deserve this. Any of this."

I blinked, struck by the gravity of my situation. Frank was out of the picture, and Mom… well.

My lip trembled and I bit it harshly despite the split. I shrugged. I didn't trust myself to speak. Principal Patterson stared at me with sad eyes. I'd never seen him look more tired. Eventually he reached across the desk and paged for his secretary. Moments later Nancy, an elderly lady with the ugliest yellow dress and the greenest eyes, opened his door.

"Nancy, call the police, please. I need to speak with them as soon as possible."

I could feel Nancy's eyes boring into me, but she said nothing, shuffling out and closing the door behind her. The silence she left behind was awkward. I sat there, trying my best to control the turbulence inside my head, to not just collapse onto the floor and weep until I couldn't move. Principal Patterson wasn't quite sure what to do with me, from what I could tell. It seemed like he wanted to say something but both of us knew that there weren't any words that could fix this kind of situation. It was tense and awkward, and I was almost glad when the police officer walked through the doors.

Almost.

See, Frank, piece of shit that he was, somehow managed to keep close ties to a couple of his old buddies from his days on the force. I hadn't had occasion to need police services, so I'd never been able to parse out the particulars of our town's police hierarchy.

But Voss.

Voss I'd seen. Voss I knew.

He was Frank's longest and most favorite drinking buddy. Voss never stayed longer than it took to pick Frank up for their weekly pub crawl, but we'd seen each other enough times that I knew his face.

As soon as he walked through Principal Patterson's door, I froze. Voss took one look at my face, black eye and all, and lost the struggle to keep the irritation off his face.

Well… fuck.

"Ah, Captain, thank you for coming over so soon, I realize you're a busy man," Principal Patterson stood, extending his hand out toward the policeman.

Voss directed his attention to the other adult and the breath I'd been holding in my chest whooshed out of me in one quick puff. Voss smiled and shook my principal's hand.

"Of course, Rob. What seems to be the problem?"

 _No, no, nonononono…_

"Well, young Piper here just confided in me that her Step-Father abused her last night."

Voss turned his gaze back on me, his brown eyes weighing something that I couldn't name. I shrank into the back of my seat, praying for a hole to open underneath me and take me away from this awful place.

"I see," he mumbled. "That definitely is a problem, isn't it?" Voss stepped over to me and crouched down so that we were at eye level. I glared at him, frightened and distrusting the calm and easy smile on his face.

"You wanna tell me how someone so pretty got such an ugly bruise?" he asked softly.

I gulped, determined not to give this man the victory of having power over my reactions. I gave him one hard look before smoothing out my face and shrugging, dropping my eyes to the shield on his chest.

"My Step-Father beat me," I said, impressed with how even my voice was.

Voss's lips thinned.

"Hm. Okay, sweetheart, why don't you come with me, and we'll go somewhere and talk about it?" I tightened the grip my fingers had on my pants so he wouldn't see my fingers trembling, and shrugged once again.

"Sure. Whatever."

Principal Patterson stood off to the side frowning, but said nothing as the police captain helped me gather my backpack. Voss walked me first out of the office, then out of the school. As soon as we were outside I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and hunched in on myself. I could hear him mumbling something over me but I couldn't make out the words.

Not that I cared.

I was too busy trying not to throw up against the nausea that had settled in my stomach.

"So," I hedged when we were finally in his car, "what now?"

I didn't get an answer and I wasn't going to press for a response, so the whole ride back to my house was silent. I spent the time watching the empty fields pass by the window. I didn't even have the energy to slam the car door when we pulled into my driveway. I was too tired. All I wanted to do was crawl into Sam's bed to surround myself in a comforting smell and cry over Mom. And possibly sleep for the rest of my life.

I was just _so tired_.

It took Frank a couple of minutes to make it to the front door after Voss rang the doorbell. I could tell that my Step-Father been woken up from a drunken stupor because he was still in the same clothes from last night. I could smell the stale bourbon from here.

"Erik," Frank groaned, holding a hand up against the brightness of the day. "What're you doing here?"

Voss nudged me forward and Frank's eyes sharpened, zeroing in on the giant bruise blooming across my nose and down to my cheek.

"Ah," he said distantly, and grabbed me by my backpack, shoving me roughly inside. I could hear them talking as I walked into the kitchen and set my backpack down on the table.

"Don't be _stupid_ , Frank. I'm not going to clean up your mess every time. Her _principal_ called me."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, sorry. It won't happen again. It was just a bad night last night. Thanks."

Our screen door shut, and I counted how many steps it took Frank to follow after me. I turned when he stopped in the doorway and said nothing. For a long, tense moment, we stared at each other.

I refused to break the silence.

"You know I didn't mean anything by it, right?" he asked me eventually.

I blinked.

 _Excuse me?_

"It was the alcohol, Piper, I didn't… I didn't mean to hurt you. But you weren't being respectful and I don't always have control of my temper after a couple drinks."

"…Mom's dead," was all I could come up with in response.

Frank's eyes widened in shock, and I had a moment to appreciate the forest green of them before I turned away from him and marched all the way up to my room. I guess I've never really had any tact, even as a child. Maybe especially as a child. That certainly could have been handled better in retrospect, but I wasn't feeling all that forgiving right then.

Now this is something that I don't admit easily, but Frank wasn't really a bad person.

Well, no, he was a piece of shit. I mean more that I'm sure he didn't start out that way.

He was an asshole and I won't ever forgive him for some things, but I don't truly believe that in his heart of hearts he was born evil. He was _weak_. He had demons (as we all do) but he didn't have the strength to fight against them, nor ask for the help he needed. Call it pride, call it shame, call it whatever you want.

I say this so that I can try and be as real as possible about the events that followed.

I think that Frank really did love Mom, with her sadness and everything. My father's shadow was a constant reminder in their marriage that, even though Frank could make my mom happy, he could never make her happy _enough_. My father's memory has kind of been a shadow on everything in my life. It's a tough name to live up to. But Frank, well…

Frank was beaten down by the weight of my father's death every time Winona was home.

Maybe that's what drove him to the drinking. Maybe it was something else, but my father just exacerbated the issue. I'm not sure if there's really an answer to what made it start. Some people are just born with biological predispositions and don't really need something bad to happen for the drinking to get out of control.

What I do know, however, is that whatever started Frank's drinking, my mom's death _definitely_ made it worse.

If I thought Frank was an alcoholic before, it was nothing to the amount of booze he started consuming daily. I think he blamed my mom's death on my father and since I was the only one left around related to the man, it became my responsibility to take the blame.

I tried telling people in my life.

I didn't want to be one of those statistics, one of the countless victims that just _let it happen_ without even putting up a fight. I knew I hadn't done anything, that Frank's problems were entirely his, and of his own making. I didn't deserve this.

A few times I even ended up in the hospital.

Voss would come around and make a big show out of taking my statement and kicking up a fuss about how Frank needed to get his act together. Voss would lug me off as soon as I was cleared and stick me in a foster home for a couple nights while Frank got thrown in the drunk tank and sobered up. One court hearing and mandatory community service later, and I was right back where I started.

For a long, long time, I lost my faith in any kind of authority figure.

Frank was a fuckup of the highest caliber, and Voss wasn't too far behind in my opinion. But all of the social workers, the foster parents, my teachers… all of them saw just as much and could have put up any kind of protest. Literally _everyone_ in this town knew what my Step-Father was doing to me, and no one tried to stop it. I don't think I'll ever forgive Riverside for that.

Time passed.

I grew older.

Sam came by for the last time, told me he couldn't stand this place anymore, and that he was leaving and never coming back.

I didn't get to go with him.

Frank gained weight and was more belligerent everyday. I got new scars, old ones faded, and then beatings would open those injuries. Around and around it went.

I learned that the value of _things_ and _stuff_ was only in how much sentiment I got from them, or how much Frank could use them against me. He regularly went through and trashed my room while I was gone, breaking and shredding whatever he could get his disgusting hands on. I learned that things were just _things_ , even if they had originally been special (like my father's books)

No matter what, everything burns in the end. I could always replace _things. Things_ didn't mean much to me.

And so it went in this gray and dreary gloom.

One day bled to the next, bled into weeks, bled into months. I was nearly twelve before anything more significant happened to me.

I was skipping school again, because going just made me depressed. I'd learned all the material anyway, so what did it matter anymore?

My old reading tree had grown taller now and the branches Sam had taught me to climb gave me higher perches to look out to the horizon with. Always the horizon, because if anyone thought I was going to stay in Bumfuck Nowhere, USA for the rest of my life, they had another thing coming.

If I squinted real hard and the sun wasn't setting, I could see the shipyard off in the distance where Starfleet commissioned our contractors to build the best of the best.

Currently, they were building what was supposed to be the top of line flagship when she was done. The framework had been finished three months ago, and lemme tell you… she was going to be gorgeous.

I was contemplating what it would be like to sail away on one of those starships, away from this planet and all of the tragedy that it had caused me. My father's science books had more than piqued my curiosity about the universe (though my real love tended to focus more towards engineering and languages).

I was ready. I had plans. I was going to join up as soon as I reached the minimum age and never look back.

I could almost remember how to smile when my thoughts went there.

Sadly, my daydreams were interrupted by the gentle bass of male voices on the ground below me. I rolled my eyes, thoroughly unhappy with being dragged from my place in the stars, and wishing for the trillionth time that Frank would just roll over and _die_ already.

"-thing of beauty!"

"Yeah, it's a classic. Fully restored from the 1960's, if you can believe it!"

"Really? If that's true, Mr. Porter, then I'd say you have quite a fortune on your hands. Of course I'll have to inspect the condition of the car first, for authenticity's sake. You understand."

"Of course, of course! If you'll just follow me it's right over here."

I couldn't believe it.

 _Un-fucking-believable._

Frank had _no right_. That wasn't even his car! My father built that, with his own two hands! How dare he. How _dare_ he.

I stayed up in my tree, eyes welling up with tears of anger that were just right under the surface these days, waiting (always waiting), and I bided my time.

I sat for the hour they were in the shed inspecting the car. I sat for the hour after that that the two men spent hammering out an agreement. I sat for the half hour it took after that for the businessman to leave, and Frank to go back inside the house before I dared to climb down.

I stomped right up the shed door and flung it open, glaring at the car with all of my bitterness and rage, everything I hadn't allowed myself to feel since the day my mom died.

Without a second thought, I ripped the keys off the wall and flung myself into the driver's seat. Against my mom's wishes, one of the things my brother had taught me to do was drive Priscilla.

She was an old manual transmission, she wasn't a souped up hover car like people had in the cities. She was all muscle and power and everything right about the 20th century.

And she was never going to be Frank's.

Frank tried to chase after me as I peeled off the property. I cackled at his scream of rage as I swung around the bend, flipping him the bird. I felt alive in a way I hadn't in ages. I pushed the engine as hard as it would go, feeling the vibrations travel up through my hands and feet and right into my chest. My heart pounded against my ribcage.

I let the convertible top be ripped off its hinges by the wind and reveled in the way my hair whipped behind me and in my face. I even grinned at the flashing lights when I saw the cop behind me.

And so began the chase.

It ended at the top of a canyon. There was a moment after I'd set everything in motion so that Priscilla would go flying off the edge and crash at the bottom in a blaze of fiery glory, where I had to make a decision. It was only a fraction of a second, but I had to decide if I was going to jump from the car, if I thought life was worth it enough to jump from the car and live. The important thing in the end, is that I _did_ jump, and that I _did_ live, but there had been a ghost of "what if" before that, and I'd wondered.

Anyway, suffice to say that Frank was displeased with me.

I guess a more accurate way of putting it, is that the beating I got that night was, without a doubt, the worst I've had in my entire life. Truth be told, Frank nearly killed me. I had three broken ribs, a broken wrist, and nose to say the least of my injuries. One of the ribs had punctured my lung, and on the way to the hospital in the ambulance (because when I wasn't breathing, even Frank knew he'd fucked up and made the call), I flatlined. When I woke up, I even had the sore chest from them shocking my heart back to life to prove it. Though maybe that was just the broken bones. It's hard to say.

I was in the hospital for two weeks before the doctors felt comfortable letting me leave. Much to my surprise, and joy, Frank had been arrested and sentenced to time in prison for domestic violence, child endangerment, child negligence, and assault of a police officer. Captain Erik Voss had also been put away for fraud and conspiracy for covering up Frank's darkness. Apparently the powers that be (meaning the judge that kept presiding over Frank's hearings) had finally felt like I'd put up with enough bullshit and decided to step in and do something about my shitty life.

Go figure.

I was told by the social worker when I was discharged that full custody had been granted to my aunt and uncle on my mom's side. I wasn't sure what to expect from these two, considering that I'd met them twice, and both times when I was a toddler. But I was… hopeful. It was a heady feeling, that hope. It was something I'd denied feeling to save myself from an even greater pain when that hope was crushed.

But now… now Frank was gone, and I was leaving, and I couldn't stop it no matter how hard I tried. I kept telling myself that I was being stupid again, that just because there was a familial relation didn't mean anything until they proved they weren't like Frank. I was only setting myself up for heartbreak. Besides, who would want to watch over someone like me, all broken and bloodied and bruised goods that I was? Still, whatever future this new family held for me, it had to be better than the one I'd left behind. Or rather, that had left me behind. This opportunity had to be _better_ , because I couldn't believe there was a way for my life to get worse.

Now, I want you to keep in mind that for as much bad as I've experienced in my life, there is just as much - if not more - good. Maybe a bit delayed in getting to me, but it's there. You just have to wade through the hard stuff to see it. It's worth it, I promise. I need you to keep that in mind going forward.

Because now I'm going to tell you about my time on Tarsus IV.

* * *

Sorry this took so long.

Life... happened.

I hope it was worth the wait.

MoonDrop


End file.
